Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Doomed, We're Doomed, I Tell You

So this is an interesting finding with some obvious application to our political system. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that unemployed people are less likely to believe others have the right to keep what they earn. Here is a description of the findings from Phys Org (h/t: Mark Hemingway)

As Luis Miller asserts, “in general, both people in employment and those in full-time education believe that people should be allowed to keep most of what they earn and that it is OK for those who work harder or who are more productive to earn more”. He went on to say, “When people become unemployed, our study indicates that they let go of this belief. They put a higher value on the redistribution of money, which, in social terms, would mean higher taxes on those earning more in order to fund increased public spending.”

This study did not simply ask people how they felt about re-distribution of wealth. Instead it created a scenario in which people did “work” during the study and were then given a chance to re-distribute payment for that work (or not).

Rebecca Harms, a senior member of the German Green Party, and co-President of a major Green Group in the European Parliament, thinks referendums, direct plebiscites, should be limited to issues which don’t endanger power structures which she thinks are important.

According to Breitbart;

Greens Want To Ban Referendums On European Questions, As Direct Democracy Threatens the EU
A senior Member of the European Parliament (MEP) for the German Green Party has called for an end to referendums on issues “not suitable” for direct democracy because they threaten the very existence of the European Union (EU).Rebecca Harms MEP (pictured above), a qualified tree surgeon and Co-President of The Greens–European Free Alliance group in the European Parliament, has said that some questions relating to the EU are not suitable for referendums.
Showing how much she values direct democracy, Ms. Harms used the shock of the recent rejection of the EU-Ukrainian agreement by the Netherlands to make the case for limiting the use of referendums in future warning that they could “endanger the existence of the EU”, reports Austria’s largest newspaper Kronen Zeitung.
According to German newspaper Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, the list of subjects which others have deemed “not suitable” for referendums include the controversial but yet-to-be-finalised Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement with the U.S., the principle of open borders within the EU, and the future of the euro currency.
…
Even worse, the left wing German newspaper Junge Welt reports that Ms. Harms claimed it is unacceptable for a mob of people to be able to reject an agreement that was “supported by all governments of Member States and their parliaments.”